Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) (19 page)

She exhaled, and through the smoke I saw the most beautiful woman in Europe.  That much I knew before. And I could add the most dangerous to her list of attributes. We locked eyes.  She didn’t seem ready to say anything, I needed to get the show on the road.  I didn’t know what the demons wanted, how to get it to them, or how long my friends could last wherever they’d been sent.  A glass of water—the kind with bubbles—sat waiting on my side.  She expected me.

My vampire inside wrestled for control.  It wanted to toss the table aside and rip into that pretty head.  To taste what was beneath.  Not out of hunger, but out of vengeance.  Vengeance for my friends and for me because I’d need to abandon the life in Wiesbaden.  Something inside also screamed for a measure of payback for the lie she’d lived and things she’d made us believe about her.  But didn’t that make us birds of a feather?

I took a sip of the water in front of me.  My grip broke glass and water spilled across the table.  Nobody noticed because the glass didn’t explode.  Slow strangulation and it cracked into many pieces.  An omen of things to come for the woman sitting across from me.

She looked from my eyes to the broken glass and a shallow smile crossed her lips.  A bit confusing, but this was my week for confusion so this latest thing could take a number and get in line.  I forced myself to calm down. My teeth protested, but eventually obeyed.  I didn’t return her smile.  I had work to do.

“Hello, Sarah,” I said.  “Why am I not surprised to see you?”

Chapter 26

I finally managed a smile as I leaned forward so that only she could hear what I had to say.

“I should kill you now,” I said.

I sat back and waited for a reaction.  Gorgeous Sarah Arias took another puff, held it for a moment…apparently in thought.  She exhaled.

“Would that solve your problems?” she said.

Good point.  Killing her would compound things.  And maybe sentence my friends to an eternity living in a world concocted in a demon’s mind.  No matter how tight she was with the demons, The Seven, or whoever hired Soyla as blood feud centurion, Sarah Arias represented my best chance for resolution.  I wasn’t ready to say my only chance, but I needed to protect her like the one golden egg of redemption.

“You would protect me?” she asked.

The mind reading thing again.  I’d use spooky to describe it, but I’d just returned from an alternate dimension located in some unseen frequency on top of my own sweet earth and I’d been fifteen rounds with a faceless demon.  Add to that a ghoulish painting of angels, demons, and monsters capering around my helpless bagger friends? Spooky took on a meaning greater than mere mind reading.

“Stop with the carnival tricks.” I said.  “They’ll be pissing me off soon and you should get ahead of the game and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“How can I stop what I can’t do?” Sarah Arias said.  “And if I could read your thoughts, it would help to decipher what you say versus what you really mean.”

Another good point.  She’d picked up on my tendency to think one thing and say something else.  On the other hand, some of my best conversations are the ones I have inside my own head.  Forces me to pay attention.  And Sarah Arias—evil mistress of murdering demonic forces or not—was firecracker hot stuff.  Her crawling around inside my head might feel sexy.  I reran the last thought.

“Wait a minute,” I said.  “Have you switched off that mind reading thing yet?”

Busted
, I thought.

“Busted?” she said.

I nodded.  First Helmet denying the obvious.  Now Sarah Arias.  Perfect.  As if I needed something else to drive me crazy.

“And,” she added, “You’re still a pig.”

“Yes,” I said.  “Thank you for that.  But why don’t you go ahead and stop now.”

“Stop what?”

Right
.  I’d show her what.

I stared into green eyes and found I could block out the cigarette smoke between us if I just concentrated on her face.  I began undressing her.  In my mind, of course.  I got rid of the sweater.  Perfect complexion underneath.  She wore a lacy…

If I took this fantasy any further I end up embarrassing myself. No reaction from Sarah Arias.  I couldn’t be sure she’d stopped with the Houdini stuff but I thought she might have.  Didn’t matter, because she’d need to pretend she wasn’t reading my mind.  So I could think anything I wanted and she’d need to act like she didn’t hear.  The results were the same as if she’d turned the magic off.

“Good,” I said.  “What’s your part in this?”

“I have no part,” Sarah Arias answered.  “I observe.”

“Observe what?” I said, “The progress of your demon buddies?”

Another smile from Sarah Arias.  It wasn’t the kind of sheepish smile you get when you’ve caught someone in the act, but rather the kind of smile I get when I’ve said something foolish.  I see it all the time from chicks.

I caught the waitress’s eye.  “Zweimal, Pils, bitte.”

I hoped I’d just ordered two Pilsner beers. The waitress nodded and turned for the bar.  I’d forgotten she spoke English like an American.  Getting a move on things was my top priority. Problem was I didn’t know which way to go.  Sarah Arias played a big part in this, and I was certain she played for team demon.  Didn’t mean I couldn’t use what she knew.

The beers wouldn’t cost me anything—well, about eight Euros—in terms of time and the forced conversation while drinking might turn up something useful. As far as I could see no other options existed.  And as the wise man on television once said, “Beer is always the answer.”

Sarah Arias didn’t protest.  Well, not the beer order.  She did kind of protest when she said, “I have no part with the evil ones.”

I didn’t think she was talking about losing a role in a Vegas act.

“Do you mean No Face and his ugly sisters?” I said.

Sarah Arias smiled.

“So what
is
your part?” I said.

“I’ve told you,” she said.  “I observe.”

Sarah Arias did not come off of information easily.  Checked with the way she treated us at the commissary.  Quiet.  Observant.  Stand-offish. Sexy without trying.  She needed to change all that—except the sexy part—if I was going to make any progress finding the thing the demons wanted in exchange for my friends.

“That’s nice.”  I said. 

The waitress delivered the beers.  I waited until she walked away. 

“You observe.  You observe what?”

“You,” she said.

Sarah Arias picked up her own glass and emptied the top quarter.  Girl must have been thirsty.  Think of the beers as hourglasses.  I was going to give Sarah Arias about that long to come up with something that would shed some light.  If it didn’t happen, back to plan one.  I’d kill her.  Maybe just a little.  I think she sensed my frustration—because we all know she promised she wasn’t reading my mind—and she began to open up.

“I have always observed you,” she said.

Well that explained everything.

“Come again,” I said.  I took another sip.  Crazy situations bring with them crazy chicks.  “Care to define always?”

The two beautiful eyes rolled like she had just heard from an idiot instead of me.  She grabbed her purse and drew out her cigarettes.  I put my hand over hers.

“Hold on,” I said.  “Why don’t you try actually telling me something.”

My hand spasmed. My buddy Willy Shacksmith could describe that feeling.  You know him as the Bard of Avon, but he’s one of us and lives in Louisiana. I don’t possess Willy’s skills with language, but I’ll try.  Pleasure pulsing with a warning that said I’d lose my hand if I kept it there much longer. And it wouldn’t grow back.  I released her and she lit the cigarette.

“Always,” she repeated.  “We knew you before you were born.”

Well, so did the Internal Revenue Service, but I didn’t think buying them beer would help. 

“Keep going,” I said, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest of it.

“We’ve always known you,” Sarah Arias said.  “You have always been special.”

“To you?”

Sarah Arias took another sip of beer before she responded.

“To me,” she said, “You’ve always been a pig.”

How reassuring
. 

“But to my master,” she said, “You are special.”

She paused with a couple of puffs and looked in deep thought, as if trying to figure out whether her master was just joking.  She continued.

“I’ve watched you since the beginning, Gaius Teutoberg.  I watched as you grew, as you became a warrior in your tribe.” 

A couple more puffs.  I’d forgotten about my beer for the moment.

“I watched as you and your comrades defeated the Roman vampire, and I tried to prevent you from taking the communion.”

I thought I ate part of a heart. 

“And so I’ve seen the waste of opportunity you’ve become since that day.  Every step of the way.”

Was I at a German restaurant or an AA meeting?
  And wait a minute.  Had she said she watched me EVERY step of the way?

“Every step?” I asked.

She blew the smoke in my direction.

“Every,” Sarah Arias confirmed.

Awkward.  I vowed right then to cut back on doing some of the things I used to do WHEN I THINK NOBODY’S WATCHING.  The key synapse must have finally fired because I caught on to what she was claiming.

“So you’re telling me that you’re my guardian angel.”

Sarah Arias did not reply.  Reminded me a bit of the recent conversation with No Face.  He didn’t reply to the crucial questions either.  Demon. Angel.  Two cheeks on the same bottom or two sides of the same coin.  But I’d let Sarah Arias be heads.  And the way she fills out a pair of jeans? She could also be tails. No Face would need to get over it.

It looked a lot like a three-handed card game.  Four, if you counted me.  The demons and their master, Sarah Arias and whoever she worked for, and Soyla and her handlers.  Neither No Face nor Sarah Arias mentioned old Sparcius.  That tended to point to his involvement.  Strong odds existed that Sparky kicked this whole thing off and then it blossomed beyond his abilities.  Vintage Sparky.

The Seven?  No thoughts as to where they stood or whether some fifth principal existed.  I didn’t think so because I didn’t feel it.  Feelings.  That’s all I had to go on as far as The Seven. 

But the years taught me that feelings is another word for experience. This situation could change.  Both Soyla and The Seven were dangerous—deadly to the point the difference between them was in degrees.  Dead is dead, after all.  For the moment, I’d leave Soyla and The Seven orbiting on the periphery, ready to re-enter at any moment to make my life miserable.  Or just over.

I’d think about all that later.  Because Sarah Arias was finally coming off some useable information. Unless you counted No Face’s claim that his butt-whipping felt like tickling.  I’d milk Sarah Arias for a few more minutes.  That sounds so wrong. Better to say I needed something to do while I addressed the last few sips in the glass. So I kept the conversation moving.

“You’re saying you work for the guy to whom a thousand years seems like a single day?”

Sarah Arias smiled and stamped out her cigarette in the half-full ashtray.

“Impressive,” she said.  “When did you read that line?”

“Missed it, did you?” I said.  “Actually I’d heard it from a street preacher in Pascagoula.”

It was my turn to smile.

“My guardian angel doesn’t pay attention,” I said.  “That explains a lot about my life.”

Sarah Arias lit another.  I don’t know what kind of salary guardian angels draw, but in Germany the cigs cost more than eight bucks a pack.  Perhaps she engaged in gray market use of her angel influencing skill as far as bagging tips.  Or maybe her master let her charge it all back as per diem. 

“We aren’t perfect,” she said.

The old
we
.  So the not accepting personal responsibility shtick found its way to heaven.  Bound to happen. Do everything right and
I
succeeded. Make a mistake and
we
aren’t perfect.  Capture the credit, spread the blame.

“Do guardian angels work in shifts?” I said.

Sarah Arias got the drift because she shot back an immediate answer. 

“Watching you,” she said, “Makes a single day
seem
like a thousand years.”

Cute.  So my angel can turn my own quotes against me.  I picked up on another vibe coming of the beautiful girl/thing sitting opposite me. Sarah Arias didn’t like me. So what? I’d had a butt full of our witty conversation.  My evening was sinking like a Malaysian ferry.  I got to the point.

“What do I do?”

Sarah Arias drained her beer.

“I can’t determine for you,” she said. “Free will.”

Free will?  Seems my guardian angel attended the same school as my demon buddy No Face.  The sum of knowledge gained from two supernatural beings playing on opposite sides?  “Bring us what they want,” No Face had said.  And now, “Free will.”  Hardly enough information to pass a urine test.

“Free will?” I said.  “Free will to do what?  I mean, I’m drowning here and you could throw me a hint.”

“What did Mestephos say?” Sarah Arias asked.

“Who?”

“The dark angel.”

She meant No Face.  No wonder he kept his name under wraps.

“He said he wanted me to bring him what they wanted,” I said.  “So what do they want and what do I do?”

Sarah Arias’s smiles were starting to look like smirks.  Not so sexy when death’s involved.

“As to what they want, the knowledge is dangerous.  As to bringing it to them,” she paused to stamp out her latest cig.  She put the pack and lighter back in her purse.  A not-so-subtle meeting terminator.  “I recommend not doing it.”

Not doing it?  Not bringing them the thing I couldn’t know about so that a horde of demons would release my friends from some form of other-worldly limbo?  Great advice.  They’d assigned me a guardian angel from the lower quadrant of the job performance ratings.

“Thanks for nothing,” I said as Sarah Arias stood to leave. 

I thought angels flew places.  Even No Face had the ability to fade away.  My guardian angel had to hoof it.  The story of my life.  Feed me catfish eggs and call it caviar.

“I gave you more than I’m allowed,” she said.

What a rebel.  Flowing with information. She walked a few paces and turned for what looked like a final comment.